Table of Contents

Living in Space

Eating In Space

Like many other activities in space, eating requires some special considerations. While orbiting around the Earth, astronauts  live and work in microgravity so crumbs and dry foods (such as powders and condiments) float and, if not contained, can contaminate the environment.

Several practical solutions exist to overcome the challenges of eating in weightlessness. Astronauts consume mostly wet and sticky foods such as oatmeal, scrambled eggs, puddings and stews because they stick to an eating utensil long enough for the astronaut to put into their mouth. Foods like bread are rejected because they produce crumbs that can float around; tortillas, on the other hand, are perfect for eating in freefall.  Salt and pepper  are also consumed, but the salt must be dissolved into water and the pepper suspended in oil.

What do Astronauts Eat in Space?

• Fresh (must be eaten within the first few days in space) e.g. apples, oranges
• Intermediate Moisture e.g. dried apricots, dried beef
• Irradiated e.g. beefsteak
• Natural Form e.g. tortillas, cashews
• Rehydratable e.g. oatmeal with raisins, teriyaki vegetables
• Thermostabilized e.g. tuna salad spread, split pea soup

All drinks, which include things like coffee, tea, and lemonade, are rehydratable. Below is a sample of CSA Astronaut Julie Payette's menu during Mission STS-96.

Abbreviations:

• (B) Beverage
• (FF) Fresh Food
• (I) Irradiated
• (IM) Intermediate Moisture
• (NF) Natural Form
• (R) Rehydratable
• (T) Thermo stabilized

On the ISS, astronaut menus typically follow a ten-day rotation that consists of three meals and one snack daily. This menu cycle may be extended in the future in order to include a wider variety of food in the astronauts’ diets. After the astronauts have made their selections, dieticians review their choices to ensure that they are nutritionally balanced and contain between 1900 and 3200 calories per day, depending on the astronaut's weight and gender.

Meal Preparation

Astronauts prepare their meals based on instructions printed on a label attached to each food item. This label also states when the food expires and contains a barcode and a color-coded dot identifying which food is for which astronaut.

Although fresh and natural-form foods can be eaten straight out of the package, most meals require preparation. To prepare rehydratable meals and beverages, an astronaut must remove the plastic covering at one end of the package and connect it to a water dispenser, to inject a specific amount of hot or cold water. Rehydratable, thermostabilized and irradiated items can be warmed in a forced air convection oven.

CSA Astronaut Marc Garneau tells us how he prepares food in space.

A Floating Table

It is impossible to 'set the table' in space as you would on Earth because glassware, utensils and other items would float away. Instead, a food tray that can hold a number of items is attached to the astronaut's lap or to a wall with adhesive straps. In addition to regular utensils, the trays are equipped with scissors to cut open the food packages to remove bite-sized pieces of food. All drinks are consumed through a straw to prevent liquid from escaping. When the meal is finished, empty packages are discarded and trays and utensils are cleaned with pre-moistened towelettes.

Emergency Rations

In addition to their regular supply of food, crews living on the ISS have an extra quantity of food that would provide them with at least 2000 calories per day for 22 days in the event of an emergency.

Transcript of Space Food Videos

Video One

Marc Garneau: Well, astronauts, just like everybody else, need to eat to stay alive. We have three meals a day and we eat them like everybody on Earth: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Each one of us has a chance to prepare the meals for the rest of the group. What I'm doing here is taking some food out of the locker. Of course, up in space all this would float and we actually use little safety nets here to keep the food down so it doesn't float all over the place. So I'll put it over here for the moment and basically tell you about the kinds of food we have. This is dehydrated food. This is the most common kind of food that we bring up into space. As you can see this one is called Italian vegetables and it's got beans and mushrooms and things like that in there, and it's completely dry. I have instructions up here that say add three ounces of hot water and then for two to five minutes I'll just allow that water to soak into the vegetables. And I'll actually heat it up in an oven as well. It also has a little dot on it. This particular dot is brown and that means that this food belongs to MS4: Mission Specialist number four, and that's me. We all choose our menus before the flight and everybody has colour-coded food containers so we can identify who the food belongs to. This unit here is what we call our galley. The solid food here, we open up an oven and we stick those items in here. Just like this. We might actually do this about an hour before the meal. It has a fan in here, because as you know, in space there is no natural convection so you have to create that and you do that with a fan. It has a heating element; you can feel the heat here. We'll just close that up and in about an hour those food items will be nice and warm.

Video Two

Marc Garneau: Now with the dehydrated food, as I mentioned to you, we have to add water. We do that over here. I pull this unit out, and I stick the food item right in here. I'm going to push it in and you can see in here that there is a big syringe, and that syringe will inject water in to the green beans and mushrooms. So I close it. Over here I dial in - I have a dial. It says three-and-a-half ounces here. If I press the yellow button, I'll get three-and-a-half ounces of hot water. Okay, here we go. You can hear the pump running and you can see the water being injected into the food container. Three-and-a-half ounces and then the light flashes. That means that it's all there; it's been injected. I pull it back, I release it. So I have my container with the water in it. I sort of knead it a bit, which is to sort of help to spread the water into the food. Then it says two to five minutes later I could eat this, but what I'm going to do again is I'm going to take it and I'm going to put it in to the oven here and close it. That way an hour from now I can take all the food out, put it in the different trays and everybody's meal will be ready.